Murder in Focus Read Online Free Page A

tore through the silence. Sanders whirled around in his chair. The remains of the soggy toast and cold bacon crumbled onto plate and table as his hand flew into his jacket and stopped. Nothing. He was alone in the bar. With his heart pounding, unable to catch his breath. Then the same whistle, just as loud. He peered into the dimly lit recesses at the end of the bar beside the telephone and noticed for the first time a large brass cage. He looked again and then laughed out loud. There was a mynah bird standing on a perch in the cage behind the bar, looking at him, its head cocked to one side. At least he hadn’t tried to shoot it. A new set of sounds, vibrating and varied in pitch and length, but not nearly as loud, filled the empty spaces in the room. It took Sanders a few seconds to place them. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. The bird was moving slowly back and forth from foot to foot while it thoughtfully imitated the sound of a push-button phone being dialed. When I was working on wiretap, Sanders thought, I could have told you what number they’d been calling when the bird was listening in by those sounds. The bird cocked his head meaningfully at Sanders and uttered his introductory whistle one more time; then he slowly and gracefully segued into the dialing sequence. This time a series of numbers crystallized out of Sanders’s tired brain, and with a self-deprecatory grin he jotted them down on the receipt portion of his bill. Neat, he thought, looking at the number that resulted, and considered asking the waitress—who had poked a resentful-looking head out of the kitchen—if she had dialed it recently. Don’t be a stupid ass, he told himself, let a couple of bills flutter down onto the table, and walked slowly out.
    The stranger unlocked the door on the passenger side of a dark red Toyota in the parking lot and gestured impatiently for Don to climb in. In seconds he jumped quickly into the driver’s seat, started the car, and turned it rapidly onto the highway in a shower of gravel. “This the fastest way to Smiths Falls?” he asked, as he turned north onto a deserted two-lane road. By now they had left the rest of the road crew a good two or three minutes behind them.
    â€œHuh?” Don seemed to be sinking fast into a little world of his own. “Oh, yeah. I guess so.” He pulled himself upright and looked at the driver. “You never said t’other day what your name was, didja?” he said, abruptly suspicious.
    â€œGreen,” said the driver laconically. Then, thinking better of it, “Rick Green. You told me yours yesterday, I think, but I forgot what it was.”
    â€œDon,” said his passenger, “Don Bartholomew,” and lapsed first into apathy, then somnolence.
    Green drove rapidly and steadily. His eyes, constantly alert, flickered back and forth from road to rearview mirror to his sleeping passenger. When they finally reached the sign that announced their arrival in Smiths Falls, he slowed abruptly. “Where to?” he asked.
    â€œHuh?” Don jerked upright. “We here already? Jesus! Where are the others?”
    â€œOh, I think we’re ahead of them,” said Green. “I don’t suppose they drive that truck as fast as I push this little car of mine along. Where shall I drop you off?”
    â€œWell, jeez, I dunno.” Don’s eyes narrowed with cunning, and he glanced sideways at the driver. “D’ja say you’re going to Carleton Place?” He pronounced it Kerlton, in the manner of the native born. “’Cause if y’are, you can let me off there, eh. The guys are gonna drop Joe off to home here. We gotta work s’afternoon.”
    Green smiled. “Sure. No problem. You just tell me where to go,” he said, negotiating the car out of the town traffic and back onto the highway. “Your work site right in Carleton Place?” he asked casually.